 This is Big Mama. She's an eight-year-old Toke Gecko with sticky feet, a long tail, and a stunning smile. Big Mama's probably the most photographed Toke Gecko in the world. Just look at her, that personality, that glamour, that pose. She's a natural. And in just the past two years, she's been in front of the lens over 500 times. Today, it's time for her close-up. There's 30 cameras, so something's going to go wrong every single time. One camera doesn't fire, one SD card doesn't work, there's a shadow in one spot. We really had to come up with a process. Everybody checks the cameras twice. It's very meticulous. Big Mama is the top model for digital life. A scientific project at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to capture virtual three-dimensional images of all living creatures on Earth. Humans have been preserving images of animal life since the dawn of mankind. And throughout history, they've been important tools for both scientific research and animal conservation. Without a record of what came before, there's no way to know how things are changing today. The reason that these are here is so that people can better connect with those animals. Get a sense for what these animals are, what they look like, and help them connect with them so that they might want to preserve them going forward. It is now more important than ever to preserve life around us as more than a thousand species disappear from the planet every year. Digital life story started with El Sapo Dorado, the golden toad. Hundreds of these jewels on the forest floor once lived in the rainforests of Costa Rica. In the early 90s, when Duncan Urchik was a college student, he went looking for the golden toad. It's a gorgeous toad. The male looks like it's been dipped in orange paint. The female is a dull brown. And they come out in these explosive breeding aggregations during the rainy season. They only live in a small area in the hills of Costa Rica. And I went and I didn't find it. May 1989 marked the last sighting of the golden toad. That species always stuck in my mind, so I've always reminisced about that and wondered what could I contribute. The threat of extinction inspired Duncan to create digital life. In order to truly capture animals without killing them or taking them back to the lab, he needed an entirely new technology. And the beast camp was born. A mobile camera apparatus that takes pictures of every detail at once. Now, which animal was Duncan going to test first? No. How about a black-tipped shark photographed from a boat in the Caribbean? And that was pretty cool because it allowed us to create the first 3D model that we're aware of of a live shark. But today, this is Big Mama's stage. And the camera can't get enough. Cameras, that is. This is no ordinary photo shoot. First, Duncan and his team set the scene. They attached 30 cameras to 10 adjustable arms. Then, they fetched the star from her green room. The wooden log makes her feel right at home. Lights, camera, and with the push of a button, action! The collection of photos are uploaded. Every angle is put through a computer software and then stitched together to create the one, the only, Big Mama! In all her three-dimensional glory. This moment, we're really pioneering the technology ourselves so that one day we can teach other people really how to do it. But it was certainly something we want to work with many different partners and to build it up. In the long run, we obviously have the plan of doing all life on Earth, but I've never made the promise that I'd personally be able to do it myself. The golden toad is gone. But for the rest of life on Earth, it might not be too late.